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Extinction, Natural Evil, and the Cosmic Cross

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Extinction, Natural Evil, and the Cosmic Cross Evolutionary Theodicy with Denis Edwards, “Christopher Southgate’s Compound Theodicy: Parallel Searchings”; Ted Peters, “Extinction, Natural Evil, and the Cosmic Cross”; Robert John Russell, “Southgate’s Compound Only-Way Evolutionary Theodicy: Deep Appreciation and Further Directions”; Bethany Sollereder, “Exploring Old and New Paths in Theodicy”; Holmes Rolston, III, “Redeeming a Cruciform Nature”; Ernst M. Conradie, “On Social Evil and Natural Evil: In Conversation with Christopher Southgate”; Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, “Evolution, Contingency, and Christology”; John F. Haught, “Faith and Compassion in an Unfinished Universe”; Celia Deane-Drummond, “Perceiving Natural Evil through the Lens of Divine Glory? A Conversation with Christopher Southgate”; Nicola Hoggard Creegan, “Theodicy: A Response to Christopher Southgate”; and Neil Messer, “Evolution and Theodicy: How (Not) to Do Science and Theology.” EXTINCTION, NATURAL EVIL, AND THE COSMIC CROSS by Ted Peters Abstract. Did the God of the Bible create a Darwinian world in which violence and suffering (disvalue) are the means by which the good (value) is realized? This is Christopher Southgate’s insightful and dramatic formulation of the theodicy problem. In addressing this problem, the Exeter theologian rightly invokes the Theology of the Cross in its second manifestation, that is, we learn from the cross of Jesus Christ that God is present to nonhuman as well as human victims of predation and extinction. God co-suffers with creatures in their despair, abandonment, physical suffering, and death. What I will add with more force than Southgate is this: the Easter resurrection is a prolepsis of the eschatological new creation, and it is God’s new creation which retroactively determines past creation. Although this does not eliminate the theodicy question, it lessens its moral sting. Keywords: eschatology; natural evil; new creation; Christopher Southgate; theodicy; theology of the Cross The groaning of creation trapped in the futility of inescapable suffer- ing punctures Christopher Southgate’s heart. This empirical reality does not comport with our trust in a gracious and powerful God. Yet, there is the cross. The central symbol of the Christian faith is a suffering Ted Peters is co-editor of the journal Theology and Science at the Francisco J. Ayala Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley CA, USA; e-mail: [email protected]. www.zygonjournal.org [Zygon, vol. 53, no. 3 (September 2018)] C 2018 by the Joint Publication Board of Zygon ISSN 0591-2385 691 692 Zygon and dying man hanging on a cross. Might reflection on that cross help us get a grip on the intractable tragedy that pervades all existence on Earth? Here is the central problem in Southgate’s words: “The Darwinian account of nature therefore poses a theological problem: did the God of the Bible create a world in which violence and suffering [what Southgate labels “disvalue”] are the means by which the good [what Southgate labels “value”] is realized?” (Southgate 2008b, 53) Did God design natural evil into the evolutionary process as an unavoidable means toward a divine end? Is God, then, indirectly responsible for unfathomable creaturely suffering over deep time? These questions take on urgency and drama because of our empathy, because our hearts hurt when other creatures, even nonhuman organisms, hurt. In what follows I will restate the problem generated by natural evil, examine Southgate’s answers, entertain critiques, and then advance my own revised Theology of the Cross. I will show how Southgate rightly invokes the Theology of the Cross in its second manifestation, that is, we learn from the cross of Jesus Christ that God co-suffers with victims of predation and extinction, feeling with creatures their despair, abandonment, physical suffering, and death. Divine compassion includes the Trinitarianexperience of creatures victimized by natural evil. What I will add more firmly than Southgate to this picture, however, is the gospel news of resurrection, of the divine promise of new creation. Southgate already believes this, to be sure; but I will more forcefully show that divine empathy revealed in the cross requires eschatological healing if it is to lessen the moral sting in theodicy. Southgate’s theological method is not merely a generic form of faith seek- ing understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). Rather, Southgate’s faith is already formed by love (fides caritate formata). His theological explorations, therefore, constitute a continuing prayer to petition the Holy Trinity to make victory, not victimization, the last word. THE PROBLEM:WOULD A GOOD GOD CREATE AN EVOLUTIONARY WORLD OF VICTIMIZATION,SUFFERING, AND EXTINCTION? Here is the problem as it confronts every card-carrying evolutionary theist: how can we let God off the hook for the gratuitous evil and suffering we observe in the natural world? The fact that hungry predators must devour their prey while in the service of natural selection leading to the extinction of entire species is loathsome to the compassionate human heart. No amount of celebrating the evolutionary rise of altruism can make up for the fact that nature still remains “red in tooth and claw,” to quote the Ted Peters 693 famous line of verse by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Who is to blame for this wretched situation? Not every interpreter of Darwinian evolution views nature as un- mitigated suffering. Among today’s evolutionary biologists and theistic evolutionists we find many who wish to thank evolution for developing a sense of cooperation and altruism. Even if these positive human dispositions are inherited from our biological past, this in itself does not gainsay the necessity for dealing theologically with nature “red in tooth and claw.” A closer look shows that evolutionary theorists cannot rightly claim that evolution’s increase in cooperative altruism over time reduces the victimization of natural selection. Rather, cooperative altruism purportedly evolves in service of the survival of the fittest groups. Cooperative altruism is intra-tribal, whereas war and violence still characterizes extra-tribal competition. “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary” (David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, quoted in Kohn 2008, 297). In sum, creaturely suffering is ubiquitous, unchanged by the development of cooperative altruism. Southgate gives attention to the nature of creaturely suffering. Physical suffering alone does not account for the tragedy inherent in evolutionary life. Even more dramatic is the victim’s loss of fulfillment, the premature cutting off of life’s potentials. “There are innumerable sufferers of the processes of predation and parasitism, including organisms for which life seems to contain no fullness, no expression of what it is to reach the potential inherent in being that creature. Indeed the overproduction typical of biological organisms virtually guarantees this. The unfulfilled organisms may be regarded as in some sense the victims or casualties of evolution” (Southgate 2008b, 57). Specifically, what lacks fulfillment is the potential of a creature to become a full self. “What is vital to a treatment of evolutionary theodicy is to acknowledge that the character of the creation is such that many individual creatures never ‘selve’ in any fulfilled way” (Southgate 2008b, 67, Southgate’s italics). When it comes to providing a theological explanation for natural evil such as loss of the potential for selving, our religious ancestors had it easy. They could simply blame Adam and Eve for falling into sin. It was human sin that corrupted an otherwise paradisiacal creation. In the wake of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the concept of deep time, however, we can no longer locate a primordial paradise in history let alone an event such as the Fall. Our biological inheritance still potent in today’s DNA indicates that there never was a time when our progenitors were spared from violence. We cannot help but ask: did God create life already violent? In short, today’s theologian informed by science seems trapped into asserting that it is the Creator, not the creature, who is responsible for sin, evil, and suffering. 694 Zygon Two not-too-feeble attempts to protect our Creator God from respon- sibility are being put forth by some of the most learned theologians of our era. Christopher Southgate names their positions: the Free Process argument and the Only Way argument (Southgate 2018). According to the Free Process argument, our evolving creation experiences freedom; and free action on the part of creatures risks electing evil. Even so, the gift of freedom is a greater good than the sin, evil, and suffering that we so disvalue. Or, to say it another way, the creation is free to make itself, and suffering is the cost that must be paid to purchase this creative freedom. The Only Way argument is similar though distinctive: the only way for God to achieve goodness is to develop a creative process that includes the possibility, if not the unavoidability, for harm. Accordingly, the only way God could give rise to a biosphere containing value and beauty in life is to guide a process such as natural selection replete with extinction yielding to the survival of the fittest. Extinct species have been sacrificed so that humanity could evolve, and this is the only way God could have created us. In both arguments, nature is autopoietic (self-creating) and God must rely upon nature’s self-creating processes to realize the divine goal ap- proached by the human species. Suffering is a byproduct. Southgate’s assessment of both the Free Process and Only Way arguments is this: they each presuppose that a Fall-based argument is no longer tenable and that any goodness in creation comes in a package deal with what is evil. One package. Both good and evil. This is the only creation we know. Atleasttodate. AMBIGUITY The single package we call “life” is ambiguous.
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